Digital audio video (AV) streams or files are preferably presented to a viewer with the audio and video components in synchronization. To ensure the audio and video are played with the correct timing, the stream or file may include some form of AV-synchronization coding, such as interleaved video and audio data or relative timestamps.
Delays in audio or video relative to one another may occur for a number of reasons. Intensive video processing, such as format conversion, encoding, and decoding can result in the video stream falling behind the audio stream, which generally includes a smaller amount of data to process.
While existing methods for audio and video synchronization may alleviate timing issues occurring in the playback of an individual AV stream or file, unique problems must be overcome to ensure audio and video synchronization among and within multiple multimedia content segments that are to be seamlessly joined together. Further complications arise when a viewer has the ability to select multiple content segments to be seamlessly combined and played in real-time. Accordingly, there is a need for systems and methods to synchronize audio for selectably presentable media content segments, such that a synchronized, seamless transition in audio and video occurs between the end of one segment and the start of another.